Midrasha

In contemporary Israeli usage, midrasha can refer to a post-high-school seminary or institute for Jewish study.[1] In the religious-Zionist context, midrashot often function as women's study academies, or batei midrash, where students engage in traditional Jewish religious study.[4] Nishmat and roughly twenty to thirty other midrashot have been recognized by Israel's Education Ministry.[1]

Midrashot are diverse in structure and content, and the available sources do not present a single uniform curriculum. They include post-high-school programs and other institutions teaching Jewish texts.[2] Some emphasize Talmud and halakhic texts alongside university studies; others associated with Mercaz HaRav focus on spirituality, biblical studies, practical halakhah, and Jewish thought and do not teach Talmud directly.[2] Bar-Ilan University's Midrasha for Women, for instance, offers students a Jewish Studies program alongside a full academic curriculum, functioning as a counterpart to the university's men's Institute for Advanced Torah Studies; together, both frameworks serve over 1,300 students.[5][6]

The term is also applied outside the established women's Torah-study frameworks. In 2023, Ohr Torah Stone launched HaMidrasha HaYisraelit, a year-long post-high-school seminary in Pardes Hanna for religious, traditional, and secular young women, combining study of Jewish and Israeli thought, Zionism, spirituality, and philosophy with preparation for military or national service.[7] Separately, HaMidrasha is also the name of the Faculty of Arts at Beit Berl College near Kfar Saba, an art school that trains artists and art teachers and is classified by the Council for Higher Education as a college of education.[8]

The historical exclusion of women from formal Torah study shaped the context in which midrashot eventually emerged. The Jewish Women's Archive notes longstanding disagreement over whether women were exempt from or excluded from Torah study and identifies Rabbi Eliezer's restrictive opinion as widely accepted and influential on later halakhic rulings.[9] Nevertheless, some women studied Torah in every period, and the late eighteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment and renewed calls for halakhic revision in the late nineteenth century introduced new pressures for inclusion.[9]

A significant institutional development came in the mid-1960s, when Yehuda Copperman established the Jerusalem College for Women, known as the Michlalah, to offer religious high-school graduates a more rigorous course of Jewish study than existing teachers' seminaries provided.[2] The Michlalah emphasized close textual analysis of Tanach and attracted students seeking both professional preparation and personal study, as well as women from abroad attending a one-year program.[2]

Different accounts mark slightly different moments as the beginning of the modern women's-study movement in Israel. Irit Koren identifies Alice Shalvi's founding of Pelech in 1975 — the first Israeli school where girls were taught Talmud as boys were — as a key starting point, while Tamar El-Or points to the opening of the women's seminary Michlelet Bruria in Jerusalem in 1977.[10] The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs dates the founding of the Bruria Beit Midrash to 1976, crediting Rabbi Chaim Brovender with helping create study frameworks for men and women in the late 1960s and introducing high-level Talmud and Tanach instruction for women using the hevruta method, in which students work through a text in pairs before a teacher's lecture.[2] That institution eventually became Midreshet Lindenbaum and was integrated into the Ohr Torah Institutions in 1986.[2]

Through the 1980s and 1990s, the number and variety of midrashot grew considerably. Matan, the Sadie Rennert Women's Institute for Torah Study, was founded in Jerusalem by Malka Bina in 1988. A 2000 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs article reported approximately 1,300 women participating in more than a dozen programs at its Jerusalem center and branches in Ramat Hasharon-Raanana, Haifa, and Beersheba, spanning study for young women before or alongside university, adult classes, and intensive Talmud study.[2] Women's batei midrash at Kibbutz Ein Hanatziv, Nishmat, and Pardes also expanded women's access to religious learning that had until recently been largely closed to them.[10]

Midrashot vary widely in the subjects they teach and the populations they serve. Subjects offered across different institutions include Talmud, Tanach, Jewish thought, Jewish philosophy, and halakhah.[2] A 2009 report characterized Midreshet Lindenbaum as an Orthodox women's seminary, Beit Morasha as a center for Jewish studies and leadership development, and Nishmat as a center for Jewish women's learning.[11] Advanced programs at these institutions offered study in Talmud and halakha, sometimes using material also studied in rabbinical-school tracks, with the aim of preparing women for leadership or participation in halakhic discussion.[11]

One prominent program is Nishmat's Keren Ariel Fellowship, a two-year course preparing women to serve as yoatzot halakha — halakhic advisers on family-purity matters. Students follow a curriculum in the laws of nidda comparable to that studied by rabbinical students, receive additional instruction in women's health, and sit four-hour oral examinations before a panel of rabbis.[11] By 2009, sixty-one women had graduated, and the program had handled more than 100,000 inquiries through Nishmat's hotline and website from Israel and abroad.[11] A parallel halakhic-training program at Midreshet Lindenbaum began in 2005, preparing women for examinations described as equivalent to the Chief Rabbinate's certification exams for men; by 2021, seven centers operating through different midrashot across Israel were training and examining women in halakha, with dozens of graduates and more still in training.[12]

Midreshet Lindenbaum also developed a program preparing women to advocate in rabbinical courts through intensive study of halakhic texts concerning marriage and divorce and expanded post-high-school study for women from the diaspora.[2] A national-service and army program offered through three midrashot combines traditional religious study with full military service, usually in the IDF's Education Corps; these midrashot serve as mediating structures that support students throughout their service.[4]

Community-based initiatives have added further variety. Kolana, a women's beit midrash in Givat Shmuel founded by Rabbi Dr. Tamar Meir, opened to women of different ages and backgrounds — not only religious women — offering weekly Talmud classes, study of midrash and Tanach, and learning events open to the wider public; more than 200 women and several men attended its public launch.[13] At AMIT high school in Rehovot, a beit midrash ran a weekly program in which married couples studied the weekly Torah portion using source sheets, with the stated aim of building direct engagement with texts and independent study skills.[14]

The growth of midrashot has had consequences extending well beyond formal education. Women's increased textual knowledge has contributed to changes in religious practice and authority, including women's roles as halakhic advisers and advocates in rabbinical courts.[2] A Ynet opinion article described the expansion of women's Talmud learning over the preceding two to three decades as substantial: what began in small circles had become widespread, with women teaching Talmud in elementary schools, high schools, and girls' midrashot.[3] Their participation has not resolved disputes about women's place in religious leadership, but it has expanded women's roles in Jewish education and halakhic life in Israel.[3]

In July 2025, Israel's High Court ruled that the Chief Rabbinate must allow women to take its rabbinical examinations — a ruling that did not grant a right to ordination but opened access to exams carrying economic and social consequences.[15] Women studying at institutions such as Midreshet Lindenbaum and Nishmat became eligible to sit the official exams in addition to those their institutions organize themselves.[15]

Bar-Ilan University's Midrasha for Women illustrates how the model has been integrated into mainstream higher education. Functioning as a counterpart to the men's Institute for Advanced Torah Studies, it enables students to pursue intensive yeshivah-style study within a full academic university program, reflecting Bar-Ilan's aim of bridging religious and secular life in Israel.[5][6] Related initiatives have extended women's Jewish scholarship into published writing: the 2021 Sefaria Jewish Women Scholars' Writing Fellowship, organized in partnership with Maharat and partly funded by the Maimonides Fund, received 75 applications and selected 14 fellows.[16]

Several contested questions surround midrashot and their place in Israeli religious life. Sources mark different starting points for the modern expansion of women's Jewish learning in Israel, variously citing Pelech in 1975, the Bruria Beit Midrash in 1976, or Michlelet Bruria in 1977; these reflect differing historical framings rather than a single agreed origin.[10][2]

Women's access to halakhic authority and formal religious credentials has been a recurring point of dispute. A 2021 case before Israel's Open University highlighted unequal treatment: Netanela Sari, who had studied for two years at Nishmat while pursuing a psychology degree, was initially denied academic credit for her Torah studies, though the university granted credit for some men's yeshiva study. After the advocacy group Itim argued this constituted gender discrimination, the university reconsidered and awarded her six general humanities credit points.[1] Separately, a 2021 Ministry of Religious Services proposal for a separate examination system for women drew criticism from Itim chairman Rabbi Shaul Farber, who argued that a separate system was not "separate but equal" and that women should sit the same exams as men; the proposed examinations would not qualify women for city-rabbi posts, which require Chief Rabbinate ordination.[12]

The relationship between women's advanced Torah study and feminist identity is itself contested. A Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs essay notes that participants and leaders did not always describe their movement as feminist, even while connecting women's pursuit of knowledge and religious responsibility to broader ideas of autonomy.[2] Sources variously frame the expansion of midrashot as educational access, a change in Orthodox authority, or development within existing religious structures, while reporting continued disagreement over women's religious leadership.[2][3]

The name HaMidrasha is also borne by the Faculty of Arts at Beit Berl College, an art school near Kfar Saba that trains artists and art teachers and is classified by the Council for Higher Education as a college of education.[8] It was established in 1946 by Lithuanian-born arts teacher Eliyahu Beiles to train art teachers, beginning as an evening facility in an elementary school in Tel Aviv.[17] After crafts instruction was separated from painting and drawing, oversight moved from the Knesset's Education Committee to the Education and Culture Ministry in 1964; artist Raffi Lavie joined the teaching staff in the 1960s, a period associated with a stronger emphasis on art-making and art education.[17]

About 30% of students at HaMidrasha come from Arab towns, and the school runs a preparatory course for Arab Israeli high-school graduates, with 70% of participants subsequently accepted into the full academic program.[8] This institution shares only its name with women's Torah-study midrashot and operates in an entirely distinct educational and cultural context.